


The Living Daylights

by Miaou Jones (miaoujones)



Category: The Last Client
Genre: Figuring Things Out, Love, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:31:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Miaou%20Jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris had his whole life, such as it was, figured out—until he met Asahi. Now all bets, even the ones he made on himself, are off. (Set immediately after the events of the last published chapter.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Living Daylights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inevitablewebreathe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inevitablewebreathe/gifts).



> In the scanlation I read, Asahi's name was translated as "the light of the morning sun," which inspired the title here.

You've never held with the belief that things look better in the morning. Anything that's terrible in the dark is just as terrible in the light of day: your father didn't always beat you in the dark of night and the sun shone just as brightly the day your sister killed herself as it does on any other day. 

No, you've never believed light from the morning sun has any power to improve the world. Until now. 

He's still asleep beside you. You don't have to look to know; you can feel his breathing, the slumber in each breath. You don't have to look but you could.

You could look, but you don't. You're afraid—you haven't been afraid in years. It's not that you're oblivious to danger, it's just that you haven't cared about consequences. But now you do: you find that you very much do care about the consequences of having fucked him. 

Everything had consequences when Aya was alive and you were afraid all the time. The worst of it is that there's nothing you could have done—or rather, you could have done countless things you didn't do, but they all would have led to the same end. You've been through it, down every possible path in your mind, wrestled with every choice, and you can't find the happy ending. So her death wasn't your fault, but you take no solace in that.

Since you could not change endings, you decided not to get involved. If you had no attachments, there could be no consequences. You learned the tricks to a disconnected life. You even learned that the greatest distance between you and yourself was not to consider yourself in third person but to address yourself directly, keeping strictly to the imperative form in all things.

Maybe it isn't a good way to live but you've never thought it worse than any other. 

The first time you saw Asahi, you knew there was a danger there. You helped him anyhow, and told yourself you were mocking that danger, flaunting your indifference in the very face of possible consequences. You kept seeing him because to do otherwise would have meant admitting there was something different about him, something special, that somehow he'd slipped through the smallest cracks, slipped through at a molecular level and gotten inside you. 

You should have walked away as soon as you felt him inside you. You should have turned your back and felt him slip out with every step you took from him.

You knew what you were doing was wrong, but you did it anyhow. 

Just like yesterday. You knew it was wrong to fuck him. You _knew_ , but you did it anyhow. And you liked it. You couldn't stop; you didn't want it to ever stop. You loved it. 

You love him.

And that's why it can never happen again. You've been up for hours running scenarios and considering consequences, and that's the resolution you've settled on. And maybe that's the resolution he's settled on, too. After all, he was the one who said, "Just one night"; maybe that's all he ever wanted. 

But you were looking at him. You were looking at his face while you were inside him and you saw it in his eyes, the reflection of your own desire—more and more and everything, again and again; or nothing at all, nothing else as long as you're with me, _"Don't leave me,"_ … 

No. Not again. Never again.

You make to steal out of bed now but his arm comes around you. You don't know when he awakened; you should have been paying closer attention. He murmurs your name and you turn to face him. "Chris," he says again, blinking slowly, like he's not ready to give up the line between dreaming and waking, hints of the dream in the soft curve of his lips. As you look at him, something in you hurts; your heart, beating, _beating_.

He shifts forward but you sit up before he can touch his dreaming mouth to yours. "Last night…"

"Last night was amazing." His smile widens as he gazes up at you.

"Last night was a mistake," you say. 

His smile closes up. He closes himself up, except for that wide open gaze on you. "You don't mean that."

You can lie to yourself but you can't lie to that gaze. "No," you say. "But even so, it can't happen again."

"Why?" He sits up, too. "Why?" he asks again, neither louder nor softer, no more or less insistent than the first time, just steady, steady even as he starts to crumple in on himself.

The crumpling is an infection, or maybe it's that, now you've been inside him, you can feel him more keenly inside of you. And it feels like you're crumbling, too.

So it really is too late. 

In that case, damn the torpedoes.

You ran this scenario, too, and you'd thought your heart would be heavier for this outcome, but you find it lightening. As light as the morning sun drifting in through the open window.

You can't help smiling. "I'm teasing." 

He regards you with suspicion, but already you see the light returning to his eyes. "It's a terrible joke," he says.

"I know."

"Why would you say such a thing?"

You can't tell him the truth, at least not the one that really prompted your words. You could tell him that it hasn't escaped your notice that he loves arguing with you, which is not a lie, but if he knows you know, he might not take pleasure in it any longer. So instead you offer one of your more maddening grins and shrug. 

He looks at you another moment, reading what he can in your eyes and the open curve of your mouth. He can't keep the hint of a smile off his own mouth when he snorts at you, and you think that's that for now.

And then he kisses you. He keeps his eyes open when your lips touch and you do, too, and you don't know why you've never thought to try kissing with your eyes open before, but you're also glad you never thought of it with anyone else because some things in your life should only be for Asahi, and this, with all its dizzying intensity, is surely one of them.

He lies down, legs spread for you. You only look at first. Your chest expands with each breath you take and your lungs feel like they're filling with something thicker than air. You keep breathing, though. You keep looking. You look up into Asahi's eyes and he blinks but doesn't look away. He licks his lips and says, "Okay," and you aren't sure if he's asking if you are or telling you he is, or simply saying that it is. And it _is_. 

You take another breath. You lick your finger and touch him, push so you're touching inside him. He flickers and contracts and expands around you. "More," he says, and you give it to him, more of yourself, your finger stretching him with each slick corkscrew caress. 

You slick yourself up and when you're ready, when you both are, he reaches for you, takes you in hand, guides you in. You push all the way in, looking at him beneath you, and as he hooks his legs over your arms to open himself even more for you, as you fill him with strokes and heat and cock, as you fuck him and fill him with yourself, Asahi moans and smiles. Oh, he _smiles_ , and you can't come yet so you do all you can: you breathe his name and keep fucking him; you keep fucking him and breathing and smiling.

 

Arrangements need to be made for the future. You're in uncharted territory now but you know at least that much. He wants to come with you when you tell him you're going out, but there are still things you need to do on your own. He accepts it with some reluctance and without a trace of doubt that you'll return, and the lightness in you expands.

The shadow doesn't fall over you until you're on your way back to Asahi. Not just a metaphorical shadow but a literal one, and you know even before you see his face that Fowler's man has found you again. "Are you going to shoot me this time?" you ask with a grin you don't feel.

"I'm unarmed," he says.

You don't believe him. He can see that you don't but offers nothing in the way of proof because your belief in this matter is irrelevant to him. 

"I just want to talk to you," he says, and for some reason you do believe this. You lean against the wall and gesture for him to speak. "Fowler is looking for you." This is hardly news and you can't imagine why he would seek you out just to tell you something he must know you already know. And if Fowler's man has found you that means Fowler himself has.

But then Fowler's man says, "He thinks you and Asahi are dead. He doesn't quite believe it, though, so he's looking for you."

This is definitely news. You don't know what to make of it yet. "Why does he think we're dead?"

"I told him I killed you both."

You want to ask why he did that, but if he thinks it's important for you to know, he'll tell you on his own; and if he doesn't think it's important, he won't say anything, even if you ask. So you keep your mouth shut for now.

"He wants to see the bodies. I'll take care of that, don't worry. But he still might not believe it, so you have to get Asahi out of here. Take him somewhere far away and get out of the game, just keep your fucking head down so Fowler will have no way of finding you."

You fold your arms across your chest, trying to study him, reading only a strange and quietly desperate sincerity. 

"You'll do it, won't you?" he says, studying you in turn.

Slowly, you nod. 

The desperation seems to leave him with the depth of his next exhale and he nods, too. "Fowler will be looking in graveyards," he says. "So don't go to any graveyards." 

The chill of his stare goes right through you, trickles up along your spine to your nape. You don't know how he knows about Aya but you're sure that's what he's talking about. "I understand."

He gives you one more look and must believe you, because he turns without another word. You watch him leave. After only a few steps, he stops but doesn't look back. "If anything happens to him, I'll know. I will come for you. And when I find you, I _will_ shoot."

You believe him on all counts.

When he goes this time, he keeps going until he's gone.

 

Asahi is there when you return to the room and tell him to gather his things, the two of you need to leave immediately. It's broad daylight but you don't want to wait for nightfall. 

He doesn't need to be told to stick close to you this time; briefly, you wonder if he's even considered the safety aspect, if perhaps he's walking this close simply because he wants to. You move a little closer to him.

"Where are we going?" he asks.

"I don't know," you tell him. You really don't know. If Fowler's man knows so much about you, your best laid plans are no longer any good. You're going to have to wing this. 

You glance at Asahi and see him nodding, like he thinks not having a plan _is_ your plan and that's all right by him. 

It's all right by you, too.

It's too soon to make first person plural your default mode. So for now, it'll just be you and him.


End file.
